Skeletal scaffolding, stark metal frames, and scuffed concrete surfaces. A dozen dancers move through this industrial landscape in shifting formations. Some cross the space quickly; others stay close to the ground, folding and unfolding as the group gathers, then breaks apart. Among the ensemble are dancers with limb differences, mobility impairments, and Down syndrome. Their movements vary in pace and quality. At times, they come together in a shared rhythm; at others they separate into smaller clusters, the relationships between bodies constantly shifting as they move across the stage.
This was the opening scene of “COLONY”, a dance production commissioned for the 2025 Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) and staged at the Drama Centre Theatre. The show gathered bodies that are often kept apart or treated as out of place, and also put them in close proximity to those taken as the norm. Difference was not hidden or resolved neatly, but allowed to exist, between movement and stillness, harmony and tension, belonging and exclusion.
The production was the result of years of patient, often lonely work by disability-led organisations and arts institutions who built the scaffolding of access one rung at a time: sign language interpretation, extended rehearsal timetables, choosing venues with ramps and elevators, awareness-building for those who may never have worked with artists with disabilities before, and accessible marketing practices like using dyslexia-friendly fonts.
These access practices were woven into the fabric of “COLONY”. Audio narration, typically offered to blind and low-vision audience members over headsets—was now piped in over the main speakers for the entire audience, describing changes in staging and movement. Creative captioning, projected on a screen alongside the ensemble, translated spoken word and sound into evocative text that moved with the choreography. These access provisions were unremarkable in the best possible way. What was once treated as purely functional, a set of assistive tools separate from art-making, had become part of performance itself.
I was lucky: I had a backstage pass to the making of “COLONY” in the months leading up to its premiere. My mother, Audrey Perera, produced the show. Through her, I saw how much invisible work goes into a performance like this: coordinating complicated schedules, troubleshooting last-minute technical issues, ensuring accessibility measures were in place, and keeping artists supported and safe.
Through rehearsal clips, updates, and stories from the team, I gained an intimate knowledge of the people behind the production, the challenges they navigated, and the processes they put in place. With almost half its cast identifying as having a disability, “COLONY” is a marker of how far disability-led arts in Singapore has moved from the wings, and towards centrestage. This essay traces that wider ecosystem: the access officers working within institutions, the artistic directors imagining new kinds of collaborations, and, at the centre of it all, the artists themselves.
